With Apple’s all-but-confirmed iPhone event just a few weeks away, purported part leaks are starting to ramp up. Last night, we saw pictures of the handset’s alleged battery, and this morning another component has surfaced.

What you are looking at in the image above is what some folks believe to be the rumored smaller dock connector that Apple will implement in all of its future iOS devices, including the new iPhone and the iPad mini…

French blog Nowhereelse.fr (via MacRumors) continues its recent string of part leaks with what it is calling the next iPhone’s dock connector. Note the size of the purported connector in relation to the USB plug — it’s extremely small.

If these parts are legitimate, then it looks like Apple’s new dock connector will be a proprietary 8-pin configuration. Notice the 8 gold-plated contact pins on on the metal insertion piece above. They’re on both sides too, which could suggest that the connector could be inserted into the iOS device no matter which way it’s facing. Cool.

Obviously, there’s no way to determine if these are real or not, but Apple is widely expected to drop its 30-pin dock connector this fall. While this will make a majority of your previous iOS accessories useless, Apple is said to be releasing an adapter.

Update: The folks over at Nowhereelse.fr have updated their original post with some new information (human translated):

“We have obtained new information about this connector. We have indeed learned that it is not equipped with 8 but 16 pins with distinct functions (8 pins on each side), noting that one of them would currently have no specific function and might be saved for future use.”

It goes on to say that it has learned that the connector will also be utilized in future generations of the iPad, and that the parts in the above photos are not “final models.” This, however, does not mean that they aren’t indicative of the final product.